Even Young Kids Can Understand How Evolution Works

Mike Baird/Flickr
"The history of developmental psychology shows that the age at which children can reach cognitive milestones depends in no small part on the cleverness of the methods used to measure their ability."

That great quote is from cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, writing for the website Real Clear Education (in his debut column for the site). I would only add that the age at which children can reach cognitive milestones also depends in no small part on the cleverness of the methods used to teach them.

Willingham's column is about a new study showing that children aged five to eight are able to learn the fundamentals of the theory of natural selection. Willingham describes the study, led by Boston University professor Deborah Kelemen and published in the journal Psychological Science:

"Kids heard a story about pilosas, fictional animals whose survival was threatened when their food source, insects, started to live below ground in deep, narrow tunnels. Pilosas have trunks which might be wide or narrow. The story went on to explain that in successive generations, trunks became less variable, as pilosas with narrow trunks survived and had young, whereas pilosas with wide trunks could not get enough to eat and did not reproduce.

Researchers tested comprehension of the story and children's ability to generalize the biological principle to a new case. They were tested immediately and after three months. Each test included ten questions that probed understanding of different aspects of natural selection, such as differential survival, differential reproduction, and the passing on of traits between generations.

Seven- and eight-year-old children showed good comprehension of the story, with nearly half showing an understanding of the natural selection in one generation and 91% showing at least a partial understanding. Remarkably, three months later, this knowledge transferred more or less intact to a story about a new species."

What's most exciting to me about this approach is that it tackles a persistent problem in science education: the stubbornness of scientific misconceptions. As Kelemen and her coauthors write:

"Adaptation by natural selection is a core mechanism of evolution. It is also one of the most widely misunderstood scientific processes. Misconceptions are rooted in cognitive biases found in preschoolers, yet concerns about complexity mean that adaptation by natural selection is generally not comprehensively taught until adolescence. This is long after untutored theoretical misunderstandings are likely to have become entrenched."

Why wait to teach kids accurate scientific accounts of the natural world? It looks as if they can handle this knowledge a lot earlier than we thought.

Brilliant readers, what do you think? Should we be teaching the theory of natural selection and other complex scientific ideas to children at younger ages?